Dances With NPC’s

As eager as I am to jump ingame and check out The Secret World’s new hoverboards, I promised to tell you folks the story of our very special TSW party last Thursday. So post first, hoverboard later!

Secret Worlders got a very special treat on Thursday night…

The Secret World had just introduced new RNG bags into the Item Store. These bags, planned to be the first of many, have a military theme and also introduce “Lucky Coins” with which you can purchase some of the bags’ content if you are unlucky with them. The items from the bags are all tradeable until used, and all cosmetic, so I’d say TSW has once again done Cash Shop options right. What matters to this story is a particular emote players can get through these bags or by saving up their Lucky Coins.

Meet Nassir. Nassir is a fun guy, loves to blow shit up, and is well-loved by players.

He also does a rather unique dance which players have been begging for ever since they saw it. The problem was, this dance requires a very specific Assault Rifle to look right, just plugging in any weapon your character has with them wouldn’t work. Somehow, the devs found a way to make the dance work as a clickable item that temporarily spawns the needed weapon instead of a normal emote. This is pretty huge as it’s been a major player request for so long!

We were already excited about all of this as we prepared for Beyond the Veil that night. To celebrate, we decided to host the show from in front of Nassir’s tent instead of in Agartha. The dance is also the NPC’s idle animation, so it would be a fun way of dancing “with” him.

Just as we were starting to wrap up the show, someone noticed Nassir was missing from his spot! Before we had a chance to say the word “bug?” Nassir was spotted walking a short distance away from his position and then started talking to us in chat. 😀

“Nassir” (being controlled by our Lead Designer, Tilty) spent the next hour and a half or so partying with us and anyone who met up in the instance. He walked us over to the “Dancing Rock” asked us to teach him new dances, and even taught us a few new ones. (We were temporarily allowed to use dance emotes that are not yet live.) He asked other guards to join (brought other NPC’s over and set them dancing) and laughed about his boss being away for the night. This was all done perfectly in character, of course!

After the dancing, it was time to “blow shit up,” and we got to fire off any of our random event flares we had on hand. By this time two TSW GM’s had joined the party, and either they or Nassir started giving out extra fireworks and even some super rare rainbow items from the first year of the game!

When the sun came up over the Marya camp, Nassir said he had to go back to guard duty, and the crowd reluctantly dispersed. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I am going to grin so much every time I visit Nassir after that party!